The Great Escape
by SherLoKitty'd
Summary: When her local history museum is threatened with closure, Tia Fossil manages to salvage a diary which had once belonged to a 'Maj. J. Stewart'. However, her idyllic lifestyle is turned upside-down as she comes to discover that there's so much more to this battered little book than first meets the eye...Stewart/OC


_Okay, I realise I should most probably stay working on my other story 'When He Taught Me How To Dance' but Tia just won't leave me alone. Blame her. I have been toying with the idea of writing a story about Jamie Stewart for a while now as I feel he deserves some love too. And after seeing the wonderful Benedict in Star Trek Into Darkness, it kind of spurred me on even more. I thought I'd go ahead and post this first chapter to see what kind of response I would get. _

_**Full summary: **_When Tia Fossil learns that her favourite haunt, the local history museum, is threatened to be closed, she manages to salvage a diary which had once belonged to a 'Maj. J. Stewart', as a sort of memento. However, as time goes on, Tia's idyllic lifestyle is turned upside-down as she begins to discover that there is so much more to this battered little book than first meets the eye...

_Meanwhile, in 1914... _

Following the tragic events of the cavalry charge, Major Jamie Stewart finds himself a prisoner of war in a German camp. Weary, alone and friendless, he writes in a diary in order to keep a record of his new way of life...and finds solace and comfort from the unlikeliest and most mysterious of sources.

_Disclaimer: I'm neither Michael Morpurgo nor Steven Spielberg. I don't own Jamie Stewart or Benedict Cumberbatch. I only own Tia... *goes quietly to a corner to sob*  
Rating: I'm keeping this a T for now...but it might go up. Haven't decided yet. _

_All I ask is that you suspend a little bit of disbelief, alright? ;) I hope you enjoy, darlings!_

* * *

**The Great Escape :: Chapter One **

Tia Fossil let out a contented sigh as she gazed out at the glorious sea view before her. It was a scene which she had seen many, many times, and yet she would not ever tire of it. To her, there was nowhere in the world that was quite as special or magical as Cornwall. Especially when the weather was so gloriously sunny like it was today.

She sat down upon a bench overlooking the pretty harbour of Mevagissey, depositing her handbag and sensibly-smart black suit jacket down next to her, and stretching out her legs in front of her. Toeing off her heels much to the joy of her aching, stocking-clad feet, she was heartily relieved to have escaped from her day at the office. Tia felt there was something very sick and twisted about being forced to stay inside to work in a hot and stuffy office on a beautiful day such as this.

The young woman inhaled deeply, closing her eyes for the moment, breathing in the salt air around her, letting the tranquillity of the place work its own form of magic on her. This place really was a feast for the senses; the distant rush of the sea, the sound of seagulls' cries as they wheeled in the air currents, seemingly for the fun of it; the chug-chug-chugging of boats moving in and out of the harbour. Tia opened her eyes to take a sip of her takeaway tea she had just purchased along with the latest edition of the local newspaper.

There was not a cloud to be seen in the forget-me-not blue sky. The water before her glittered in the late afternoon sun, such a brilliantly clear turquoise, one could easily be fooled into believing that they were in a tropical location - somewhere in the Caribbean perhaps, not on a British coastline. It was small wonder, therefore, that the little fishing village attracted a lot of tourists and holidaymakers, all of them charmed and beguiled by the picturesque seaside village.

It looked like there was going to be a gorgeous sunset later on, and Tia was just vaguely entertaining the idea of bringing her SLR out with her later when she took the dog for a run, to see if she could capture some good shots. However, all thoughts of snapping photos of the evening sky were driven clean out of her mind as she flipped open her newspaper and nearly spat out her mouthful of tea as she spotted the bold headline on the first page, along with a photograph of a very familiar building.

_HISTORY MUSEUM TO CLOSE AFTER 67 YEARS _

"_What?!" _

Tia realised her rather high-pitched exclamation had been a little bit too loud and had attracted a lot of funny stares from passersby, but she did not much care. She was too engrossed by the paper's corresponding article. The further down the page she read, the more upset she became. The local history museum, one of her favourite places in the world, was closing for good due to lack of sufficient funds.

Tia blinked. This was a small village and a tight-knit community. Gossip in a place such as this made emailing look obsolete. A person at one end of the village had only to sneeze, and by the time word got around, that individual was said to be dying of pneumonia. So why on earth hadn't Tia heard about the museum's imminent closure? She slapped the paper closed with much more force than was necessary, letting out a heavy sigh. She had not visited her beloved museum for some time now, and she felt a stab of guilt that she had not done so, like she had abandoned it in some way.

"Hello? Earth to Tia!" a loud voice cut into her thoughts.

Tia started; she had been so distracted by this awful news about the museum, that she had not even noticed the arrival of her younger sister, Sophie, who evidently had been trying to engage her in conversation. Her gaze fell upon the lanky fourteen-year-old next to her, dressed in a uniform of a white blouse and grey skirt, though she had adapted her uniform to exactly the way she wanted it. Her tie was knotted low and her skirt hemmed up short. She was also chewing upon a wad of gum, her neat white teeth moving up and down.

"Oh...hey, Soph," Tia muttered, moving her bag so that the younger girl could sit down next to her. "How was school?"

"Ugh...don't ask," groaned Sophie, flopping down heavily next to her and dropping her own leopard-print bag on the ground.

"Fine, then. I won't..."

"That Victoria is a complete and utter _cow,_" her sister exploded anyway after a couple of seconds.

"Why, what's she done now?" Tia asked, and listened patiently as Sophie launched into a tirade about her arch-nemesis at school, Victoria Blake, and her latest schemes of evil.

_Oh, the joys of high school, _Tia thought with a grim satisfaction, _I'm so glad that that part of my life is over... _

Though she was only half-interested, as her mind was still firmly fixed on the dilemma of the museum. Once Sophie was done with her moaning about the day's events, she added,

" – and on top of all that, I've got a _ton_ of history homework. Can I come do it at yours?"

Tia and Sophie looked extraordinarily alike. If it wasn't for the twelve year gap between them, they could have easily passed for twins. They both shared the same honey-coloured hair, dark brown eyes, the same impish expressions...and the same stubborn streaks. Their parents owned a Bed and Breakfast known as _The Blue Mermaid_ in the neighbouring bay of Charlestown. Oftentimes, Sophie chose to go to Tia's place straight after school because it was quieter and she found it much easier to concentrate there.

"Sure thing...but I have to pop in somewhere first," Tia said, deciding suddenly, slipping her shoes back on. She wanted to see for herself whether it was really true about the history museum closing.

"Where?" her sister asked, suddenly suspicious, narrowing her eyes at her.

"The museum," answered Tia, knowing full well how the teen was going to react.

"Oh, not _again_," Sophie moaned, slumping back in her seat, sighing dramatically – which Tia had expected. "You're _obsessed_ with that place!"

"No, I'm not!"

"Yes, you are. If that museum was a man, you'd _marry_ it."

Tia only took a swig from her now cold tea and grimaced but chose not to answer this jibe. Standing up to dispose of her paper cup in a nearby bin, she pointed out, "_You_ don't have to come, you know."

Sophie sighed in a sort of long-suffering way before dragging herself to her feet.

"No, I'll come... It's not like I've got anything else better to do..."

Unlike her older sibling, Sophie held absolutely no interest in the museum. Tia loved the peaceful atmosphere of the place. The twosome took the ten-minute walk to the other side of the village where the old history museum was located. It wasn't a grand building by any means; it was only a small establishment. But there was something so charming about it. Tia would often make a point of visiting, just like she had for so many years – for as long as she could remember, actually. She loved looking at all the exhibits there. Some of her favourites were letters which had been recovered from both the First and Second World Wars; letters to and from mothers, wives and sweethearts to their loved ones. There was something so terribly sad and romantic about them.

Inside, the air was much cooler away from the summer warmth of the outside world. Much to her horror, however, Tia could see that most of the exhibits which had been here for decades, had already been packed up in boxes and crates, all carefully wrapped up in protective coverings, all set to be moved elsewhere to a new home. She and Sophie – the latter, rather reluctantly, wended their way through the old building towards a door marked _'Private – Staff Only'_ , where Tia knew to be the office.

Rapping her knuckles once or twice upon the door, Tia entered the office where she found Dennis Walker, the museum's owner and curator, riffling through a huge pile of paperwork. The tired-looking, silver-haired man looked up at her as she walked in.

"I had a feeling you'd be round soon enough, Tia," he said.

"Oh, Dennis... " Tia said in a small voice. "It's not really true, is it?"

The elderly man did not need to ask her what she meant. He emitted a sad-sounding sigh, removed his glasses from the end of his long nose and favoured the younger woman with a smile as sad as her tone and nodded.

"I'm afraid it is," he answered heavily.

"You never said anything," Tia said, trying hard not to sound slightly accusatory. After all, she had been coming to this museum for years. She felt rather let down that she of all people was not even aware of its closing.

"I preferred to keep something like this under my hat, to be honest," Dennis told her, turning back to heave the pile of papers into a plastic storage box, and grunting with the effort. "I've got my pride, you know..."

"Here, let me help..." Tia offered, rushing forward to ease the load. "So it's really happening, then? The museum is really going to close for good after all this time?"

"There's no money left to keep a place like this open anymore..." said Dennis. Tia racked her brains, thinking quickly.

"Can't we do something to save it?" she asked desperately. "The village, I mean? Like a petition or a fundraiser or something – ?"

But Dennis only shook his head sadly at her. "It's too late for that. The economy being like it is these days, the small places like this museum just can't survive in the current climate."

"But this museum is your life," Tia murmured, gazing around the office which was now littered with cardboard boxes. "I'm sure I speak for everyone that we're going to miss it so much..."

"So am I," Dennis admitted.

"What will you do now?" she asked the old man.

"Well, it's high time that I retired anyway... More time for fishing," he flashed Tia a grin, which she feebly returned. She could tell that he was putting a brave face on things.

"Can we go now?" Sophie interrupted from the doorway. "I've got homework to do!"

Tia threw an annoyed look at her sister. She knew full well that Sophie despised doing homework in any shape or form, and was never usually in any hurry in getting it done, and was only using this as an excuse so that they could leave. She turned back to Dennis, gave him a genuinely warm smile this time, and patted his arm in a comforting manner.

"I'm really sorry that it had to come to this, Dennis. You take care of yourself, won't you?"

Dennis smiled at her, patting his wrinkled hand over hers.

"Bless you, m'dear. I'm gonna miss seeing your happy smiling face round here..."

Feeling her sister's impatient eyes boring into the back of her head, Tia made her farewells to Dennis and left the museum for the very last time. Before she headed for home, she turned back to look up at the building which had brought her so much enjoyment over the years, and heaved a little sigh.

"It's just so terribly sad," she murmured to nobody in particular.

"You didn't make nearly this much fuss when HMV in town shut down. It's just a stupid museum. Who cares that it's closing? " her sister commented sullenly – and rather insensitively, in Tia's opinion.

Ever since she had started attending high school, Tia noticed that Sophie had developed much more of an attitude problem, which she never used to have. Sometimes Sophie could be the sweetest girl in the world but then the next minute, her demeanour would change completely and she would turn into the acid-tongued brat from hell and Tia found her awfully hard-going. She supposed it was part of being a typical teenager but she did not remember ever behaving like that at Sophie's age, where one minute you could go from best friend to worst enemy in just a matter of seconds.

Biting back the snappy retort dancing on the tip of her tongue, Tia instead ignored Sophie's words. Just then, something caught her eye, and she spotted two men who were shifting a huge crate of what appeared to be old books or the like, out from the museum's side entrance towards the back of a van. One of the men nearly lost his grip on the crate; it slipped a little in his hands, tilting over slightly, and some of the books inside cascaded onto the ground in a heap.

"Pick 'em up quick before the old guy notices and throws a thousand fits," Tia heard one man say urgently, as they placed the crate down and began to hurriedly gather up all the wrapped up books and replacing them.

Once the removal men had moved out of her line of vision, Tia noticed that one of the books had been missed. It lay all alone on the concrete, and Tia ventured over to go and investigate. She picked it up as gently and as tenderly as one might when they found an abandoned puppy. Brushing off a little bit of dirt and lifting its protective plastic covering, Tia discovered it was a slim, rather battered and very unremarkable-looking diary of some kind. The soft leather cover was incredibly worn with age and at the bottom, she could just make out the year '_1914' _printed very faintly there. Tia glanced around. Nobody else seemed to have noticed that the book had been lost. She looked thoughtfully at the tiny tome. Something was compelling her to want to keep it but for the life of her, she could not understand why.

"Are we going yet? I'm starving," came Sophie's disgruntled tone.

"Yep, we're done here..." Tia answered absently, slipping the book into her handbag, before she and Sophie began the steep ascent to Tia's home.

* * *

Tia lived in a little cottage at the top of the hill, near the open countryside. It was set a little further back from the rest of the village, and was a bit of a trek to get to, but the spectacular sea views once you got to the top were more than worth it. When she had first moved in here three years ago, the cottage was – to put it lightly – in a bit of a mess. With time, money, hard work and some tender, loving care, it had gone from a tired old wreck to a charming, airy cottage with truck-loads of character. It made Tia smile with pride every time she set eyes upon it.

As soon as they stepped through the front door, they were greeted enthusiastically by Tia's Westie dog, Tilly, who barked happily at the sight of them.

"Hey, Tilly baby!" she cooed to her beloved pet, bending down to give the excitable terrier a belly scratch, not caring one jot that her smart black trousers were getting smothered in coarse white hairs. "Did you miss me, huh?"

She went to open the back door, and immediately Tilly shot out to bound through the daisy-strewn grass and have a hearty sniff around, pleased to be out in the fresh air after being cooped up indoors. Tia couldn't help but smile as she gazed out at her garden...her own little slice of heaven. The flowerbeds were a riot of colour, full to bursting with rhododendrons and geraniums. At the far end, there was a little vegetable patch, currently flourishing with tomato plants. In the other corner, a couple of wooden runs could be seen, which were home to two rabbits and seven chickens, so Tia had her very own supply of eggs.

She absolutely loved it here, and couldn't imagine living anywhere else. She much preferred it up here than in the main town, away from the manic concrete jungle where their family had used to live before moving to Cornwall. The only sounds to disturb the peace here – if 'disturb' was really the right word to use - were the soft coos and warbles of pigeons, the distant 'baa' of sheep nibbling in the fields beyond, and the cheery songs of blackbirds and robins.

However, despite all of this, and although Tia considered truly very lucky to be living here, she did not realise it right now, but it was rather lonely here at times. There was no one to share it with...

Once she was changed out of her office work-wear and into something much comfier – a pale blue tank top and denim shorts – Tia bustled about her little kitchen to set about preparing some food for her pets. Sophie, who had already raided Tia's fridge and helped herself to some juice and a snack, was sat at the dining table, her school books spread all over the surface.

"So you stole a diary?" she piped up, sounding utterly unimpressed.

Tia looked up to see that Sophie, already losing interest in her history project, had picked up the dilapidated book.

"I didn't steal it, as much as..._rescued_ it," Tia said at length, grabbing an apple from the fruit bowl. Though she did feel a tad guilty; technically it _was_ stealing, but Tia felt she wanted to some kind of keepsake, her own little reminder of her favourite haunt which had brought her such pleasure over the years. No harm in that, surely?

"Of all the things in the world to steal, you go for a poxy diary," Sophie muttered, wrinkling her nose in an expression of obvious distaste. She turned the book over and over in her hands, not entirely certain what she was searching for until she took a look at the inside cover.

"Ooh, I can see a name on the inside there... _'Madge...J...Stewart...' "_ she read aloud.

Tia frowned as she said this and leaned over to look for herself. She had to squint slightly at the faded black lettering, but she could just make out the name neatly inked there.

"It says 'Major', not 'Madge'. The 'Maj.' Is an abbreviation of Major. This must've belonged to an officer of some kind," she added almost to herself, gazing thoughtfully at the little nondescript book.

As Tia bustled about in her little kitchen to chop up some fresh vegetables for her rabbits, Sophie flicked through the yellowed, damp-spotted pages.

"There's nothing written in it at all..." she said after a moment, "What's the point of that?"

But receiving no answer from her sister, Sophie took out a biro from her pencil case. She opened the book at random to a blank page, and began to write, saying the words aloud as she did so:

" '_My...name...is...Sophie...Fossil...and my...sister...is a...freak...' " _

It took Tia a moment or two to realise what her younger sibling was doing. She turned her head and almost felt her heart plummet into her stomach.

"What are you _doing?!"_ she shrieked at her, rushing over to snatch the diary away from her sister before she could inflict any further damage. She glared at Sophie.

"Oh my god, chill out, Tia, I only wrote a couple of words in it – "

"Have you any idea how old this book is?" Tia snapped at her, hugging the book to her chest like it was the most precious item in the world. "Have a bit of respect, will you!"

Sophie let out a snort and an unconcerned shrug, and Tia could feel her irritation level ratchet up a notch.

"You _are _a freak," Sophie muttered, turning back to her schoolwork. "It's _just _a diary, for god's sake..."

* * *

Tia was rather glad and relieved when Sophie eventually took her leave and caught the bus home an hour or so later. She always felt a bit worn out whenever Sophie was in one of her difficult moods, and she was irritated beyond all measure that she had deliberately defaced the diary. She needed a walk out in the evening air to clear her head.

At the moment, she was curled up on the sofa with Tilly leaning her head on her knee, thumbing through the one hundred-year-old diary to try and find the page with the offending biro scribbles of _'My name is Sophie Fossil and my sister is a freak.' _Much to her bemusement, however, she could not find it. She scoured the book from cover to cover but she couldn't see any sign at all that Sophie had written in it all. The pages were as blank as ever.

_That's weird... _Tia thought, frowning. _How could it have just vanished? _

Perhaps the teen _had_ felt bad after all for her mistreatment of the diary and had managed to remove the writing with one of those eraser pens which she owned. Yes...that would be it. Beneath all the bravado and attitude, Sophie was a good kid at heart. Smiling slightly at the thought, Tia set the diary to one side, still lying open, upon her coffee table, and clicked her tongue at her little Westie.

"Come on, Tilly! Let's go walkies!" she trilled to her, grabbing up Tilly's leash along with her camera so she could snap some shots of the gorgeous sunset, as she had originally planned, completely oblivious to the curious events which were about to unfold...

* * *

Some time later, long after Tia had retired to bed, in the wee small hours of the morning, something began to happen to the old diary which was still lying open on the table where Tia had left it...

As though an invisible hand was moving across the page, exceedingly neat and curly writing in black ink began to blossom across the yellowed-with-age paper as if out of nowhere...

'_How do you do, Miss Fossil. My name is Major Stewart. ... But how the devil can you be writing in my diary?' _

* * *

_Sooo...how did you like this first chapter, darlings? :)_

_I got the idea about the mysterious diary from the concept of Tom Riddle's diary in Harry Potter. Also, I've been to the village of Mevagissey in Cornwall myself and it's the most charming village and harbour ever, I absolutely love it. I know there is a little museum there, but the one I'm writing about is purely fictional just for the purpose of this story. _

_If you liked this chapter, please leave a review, it would mean such a lot! Until next time xx _


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